Of Blood and Heart
by trustingHim17
Summary: All her formative years, Machaela has been without a true father figure. When she befriends a teacher who treats her like a daughter, can the relationship stand the test of truth?
1. Chapter 1

A hand landed on her shoulder, startling her and breaking her train of thought. Working on instinct, she ducked out of range and reached out to grab her wand, only to register the shop instructor's amused gaze.

"Don't do that!" Machaela huffed, dispelling the magic before the wand could land in her hand.

He chuckled. "It's fun, though."

"Yeah," Machaela muttered. "It'll be fun until I attack you."

"What was that?"

"Nothing!"

Shaking his head, he reached past her for one of the tools. "Whatcha workin' on?"

She picked up her current project, a model helicopter, and handed it to him.

"I made a few pieces on the lathe for the rotors, but most of this one is pipe cleaners and rubber bands." She chuckled, "even with all these tools, the old models work best."

Holding the tiny helicopter in his palm, he raised an eyebrow at her. "The old models?"

She shrugged. "I've been making these for years. Why do you think I wandered in here in the first place? An entire room filled with tools and items to tinker with. I came for the tools and stayed for the company."

Machaela had wandered into the shop shortly after she and Jesse had started attending BAG last August, drawn by the sound of metalworking. She had originally come for the tools, but it didn't take long for a friendship to blossom between her and the shop supervisor, Jeff. Now, she saw him as a father figure.

She had struggled at first, battling with guilt at the notion she was replacing Iskandar (with ten years since last seeing her family, "Dad" was more a memory of longing than any real connection). Jesse had found her on the roof one day shortly after she had realized the depth of their friendship, staring into space as she battled whether she _could_ see Jeff as a father, and whether that would be betraying Iskandar's memory. Jesse had helped her realize that not only would it not be betraying Iskandar, but he'd probably find comfort in her having someone she could turn to. "Besides," he'd told her with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, "we always called him Grandpa, anyway."

She had laughed at that, laughed at how messed up their lives were and how she'd been struggling all this time with guilt at replacing a man she called Grandpa with a man she thought of as a father. From that point forward, even though she hadn't admitted it to Jeff yet, he was her dad.

"Stayed for the company, didja?" he chuckled at her.

She pulled a face in reply. "'Course," she said with a teasing lilt as she forced a stoic look. "Didn't you know? I'm great friends with Kaboom."

That startled a full laugh out of Jeff. Kaboom was Machaela's nickname for the electronics teacher that thought he owned the place. She'd long ago forgotten his real name, calling him Kaboom because that's what students' grades did when they took his class. Neither of them could stand the guy, hence Jeff's surprised laugh when she claimed friendship with the menace.

"Yeah, like I'm gonna believe that!" he finally replied, still laughing. She broke her stoic expression and grinned as well, but he changed the subject before she could think of a reply. "So is this thing done?" he asked.

"Almost. Here." She held out a hand, silently asking for her mini chopper back. He handed it over, and she added one more rubber band to the rotors and tweaked the angle of the tail.

"Now it's done. Watch this."

Twirling the rotors with her finger to give it a head start, she walked to the middle of the shop to a large patch of open floor space. Checking to make sure no one else was around, she tossed the helicopter a few feet into the air, where the rotors caught the air and it hovered.

With the way she had changed the angle of the tail and how she had fashioned the rotors, all it could do on its own for now was hover for several minutes. She decided to have some fun with it, though.

With a quick glance at Jeff to make sure he was watching the helicopter and not her, she muttered a quick spell under her breath. With a flick of her hand, her mini helicopter hovered its way to Jeff, whose face was _priceless_ , then flitted around the room.

Making the helicopter fly through various sections of the shop, Machaela entertained herself with Jeff's reaction: pure speechless shock that a rubber band and pipe cleaner helicopter could do all that. She hadn't shown off one of her helicopters before.

"Man, Nate would love that," he told her as he watched the chopper. Nate and Missy were his pre-teen children. "How'd you do that?" he asked when the mini chopper finally lost momentum.

Machaela chuckled. "I've told you that before." She wiggled her fingers at him. "It's magic!"

He waved her off. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. When are you gonna give me a real answer?"

Machaela just laughed. _When you realize I've never given you a fake one_ , she answered silently.

Knowing she wasn't going to answer his question, Jeff grabbed the tool he was looking for and moved to the large lathe, while Machaela changed projects and walked to the mill in the corner. Watching Jeff from the corner of her eye, she made sure he removed the chuck key before he turned on the machine.

Every lathe had a chuck, where the piece to be turned down was placed, and the key is what opened and closed the chuck jaws. The key stuck out at a right angle to the chuck and worked rather like a screwdriver. The primary safety rule of the lathe was to never leave the key in the chuck, because if someone turned on the lathe with the key still in it, the thrown key could kill anyone in its path. After a thrown key had barely missed someone the week after she started coming to the shop, Machaela had started habitually checking the chuck keys, whether she or someone else were the one working the lathe. She would have no problem yelling at anyone—even Jeff—if she saw them reach for the ON switch before removing the key.

Jeff had been doing this a lot longer than she had, however, and it was habit for him as well to remove the chuck key. With the chuck key safely out of the lathe, Machaela turned to her own project, and they settled into an easy silence while they worked.

Some time later—Machaela never could keep track of time while in the shop—footsteps snapped her out of her focus. Looking up from the piece of aluminum she was squaring, she waved to another student as he walked to the smaller lathe behind Jeff.

Keeping an ear open in case the new student needed help, Machaela turned back to her own project. She didn't work on it long, though. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end as instinct sounded the warning.

She whirled around, expecting some kind of monster attack, only to see nothing amiss. Jeff was still at the larger lathe, and the new student—Connor, she thought his name was—was readying his project on the smaller lathe.

Habitually, she watched Connor as he finished readying his project and turned to grab something behind him—leaving the key in the chuck. Machaela turned off the mill and started walking quickly toward him. She wouldn't yell, yet, though she probably should. He hadn't reached for the ON switch.

She was three steps away when he turned around and, without even glancing at the chuck, reached down to flip on the machine.

"NO!"

She was too late; the lathe was on, and Connor wouldn't be able to react fast enough to turn it off.

Adrenaline spiked, and time slowed down, but the lathe sped up, turning away from Connor. The key would fly toward Jeff, who hadn't reacted to her yell yet.

Allowing instinct to take over, magic flowed.

 _"Shfonkh."_ _Redirect._

The glyph glowed briefly in the air before flying at the speeding chuck key, sending it off course just before it would have hit Jeff squarely in the back. As it was, it grazed his shoulder before impaling itself handle-deep in the quarter-inch-thick steel backstop of the larger lathe.

* * *

Machaela shook herself out of the memory. She couldn't lose these demons, especially with how close she was to the school. Passing BAG had probably been what prompted the memory, which had been so real she grinned at "hearing" Jeff's voice again. He had moved to Brooklyn right before she started at BAG, and he never really lost the rural Tennessee accent. Having lived in Egypt or New York most of her life, she found his accent amusing.

Forcing herself to jog a little faster, she maintained most of her focus on tracking the demons that had gotten away from Brooklyn House as a small part of her thoughts finished the memory.

Time had sped back up as soon as the key impaled the back of the lathe, but she had frozen, overcome with the _what if_ s. Connor had turned off the lathe as soon as she had screamed, which meant silence reigned as she stared.

Jeff finally reacted, clutching at his arm as he hit the emergency stop on the lathe, and that was what hit the play button on Machaela. All her first aid training kicked in, and figuring out how badly he was hurt overrode her shock. Even then, it had taken days before she had been able to hear the incident mentioned without having to leave the room, and she still flinched when the topic came up months later. She knew Jeff had noticed something up, as she had caught him studying the trajectory that evening. The key had hit nearly two feet away from where physics said it should have. He hadn't said anything aloud, but the calculating look he had sent her said it all. He knew she had done something that day; he just didn't know what or how.

She turned a street corner and headed back away from the school as she allowed herself to wonder what Jeff was doing at that moment. Two and a half years after graduation, they still kept in regular contact, though she hadn't been able to introduce her siblings yet. Even having met her dad and the rest of her family the previous year, she still considered Jeff her father, or one of her fathers. After all, DNA would show her no more Lee's daughter than it would Jeff's. All that mattered was connection.

She huffed in frustration as the trail doubled back on itself, then cut through a shady alley—the kind of Brooklyn alley she probably shouldn't be walking through alone. They'd finally finished freshman year of college and were spending a week in Brooklyn before going to camp. One of the trainees' spells had backfired, and her brother and sister had opted to track the much larger group that broke away toward Queens, while she got the half-dozen that went deeper into Brooklyn. She hurried through the alley before any of the shadows along the edges could decide to materialize, then turned south again, following the trail. She was getting close.

Two more turns and another sketchy alley later, she started hearing a scuffle. With her staff in one hand and the other poised to grab her wand, she picked up her pace, sprinting around the final corner to finally catch up to the demons.

She expected half a dozen mutant Swiss Army hybrids meandering in a general direction in an attempt to find a meaner monster to team up with. What she found was half a dozen demons and three other demons she recognized from Greek myth tag-teaming a mortal man. They probably couldn't hurt the guy—the same way celestial bronze couldn't hurt a mortal—but it had to be freaking him out. Who knows what he was seeing through the Mist. She just hoped he saw them as something to be feared; otherwise, he would probably call the police as soon as she attacked.

She planned a moment before jumping in. The Egyptian demons she could take out without any problem, but none of her spells would work on the Greek demons. She would have to use her sword, which would also mean she probably couldn't battle both at the same time. She decided to take out the Egyptians ones all at once and hope the spell didn't hamper her reflexes for killing the other three.

The easiest way to do that would be to use Divine Words, so she switched her staff to her left hand and called up her sword. When she killed the Egyptian demons, the Greek ones would turn on her in a moment, hopefully giving the mortal a chance to run.

Taking a deep breath, she lunged into range.

 _"Jro soe."_ _Conquer six_.

The glyph glowed in the air before dispelling all six demons as she thrust her staff back into the Duat and attacked the Greek demons.

She had no idea what the demons were called, and honestly only recognized them as Greek because they definitely weren't Egyptian. They were about two feet tall, fast, strong, and downright ugly. _Bes would have been jealous_ , she thought with a grin.

She killed one just as she realized the other two had split. Ugly #1 remained focused on her, while Ugly #2 had decided to go back to harassing the mortal.

She delivered a hard kick to the one focusing on her, pushing it back and giving her a change to lunge between Ugly #2 and the mortal, who had frozen, staring at her.

"Dude, run! They don't want you. They want me, and they'll use you to trap me!"

Using a complex series of parries and slashes, she moved Ugly #2 back, giving herself more room to maneuver and giving the man an open path down the street and away from the fight. When she glanced back a minute later, he had disappeared, and she breathed a sigh of relief. This would go much easier without having to protect an innocent.

Though it was still two on one, without confined to keeping between the monsters and an innocent, Machaela made quick work of the monsters. Ugly #1 tried to sneak up behind her and received a pommel to the face. A few minutes later, Ugly #2 lunged, trying to sneak under her guard but impaling itself on her sword and dissolving into dust instead.

She remained alert a moment, adrenaline still humming as she made sure the monsters were truly gone. When no more enemies appeared, she let herself relax, putting her sword away and resting her hands on her knees as she caught her breath.

Then a hand rested on her shoulder.

 **Hello, my readers! Welcome to my newest little story. Hope you enjoyed the first of three chapters, and don't forget to review! :D**


	2. Chapter 2

Still humming from battle, her sword was back in her hand and swinging before she even registered activating her sword.

She spun, slashing in a maneuver meant to cut any monster in half. A half-second later, her sword clattered to the ground as she realized it wasn't a monster behind her.

Jeff stared at her, stunned, looking between her, himself, and the sword laying on the ground. He only stayed that way a moment, though. True to his motto of "go with the flow," he cracked a grin.

"I guess that'll teach me not to sneak up on you, won't it?"

She let out a half laugh, half sob and wrapped him in a hug, partly as a hello, partly to reassure herself that he was uninjured.

Only when she finally released him did he say, "What just happened?"

"What just happened," she answered, "made me extremely grateful you are fully human."

"So those things harassing me…?"

She huffed a laugh. "Of course, that was you. Figures. What could you see?" He raised an eyebrow at her, and she knew he was thinking, _the same thing that you saw_. "Just answer the question," she told him.

"Demons," he answered as her eyes widened. "Some o' them had tools for heads. The others looked like evil dwarves."

She just stared a moment, surprised. "You can actually see through the Mist."

"Missed what?" he asked.

She spelled it for him. "It's what hides the mythological from the mortal." She looked around. "Come on. We need to get a few blocks away from here before others catch the scent of battle." He opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off, "I'll answer your questions, but I'm not putting you in battle to do it. I told you run _away_ from the battle, remember?"

He pulled a face at her. "There's a Chick-fil-a three blocks north of here. That far enough?"

She nodded. "Three blocks should be okay. Plus, you know I can never say no to Chick-fil-a."

He smirked. "Why do ya think I suggested it?"

She huffed a laugh at him, and they set off walking, Machaela still on the lookout for more monsters. Finally, nearly two blocks from the battle, the normal crowds reappeared, and she started to relax. Deserted streets in Brooklyn spelled battle for any demigod _or_ magician.

Jeff eyed the ebb and flow of people as the duo dove further into the crowd. "Where'd they go?"

"Mortal minds are easy to manipulate," Machaela answered quietly, still watching the crowds around them. "Most Egyptian demons _convince_ everyone nearby they have somewhere better to be. Some Greek ones can do it too, though not many. The Greek ones usually like the crowd—makes it harder for the demigod to fight back if all the mortals are screaming about the teenager beating up an old lady." She glanced at Jeff, amused at the perplexed look on his face. "The Mist makes the mythological look mortal. A demigod fighting a hellhound with a sword might appear as a teenager beating a puppy with a stick. Gets really annoying when we're the ones painted as bad, because then the police get called."

They walked up the doors of the restaurant as she finished, and Machaela snickered at the look on his face. She agreed with her sister: if you're going to explain the gods to someone, confuse the heck out of them first. Not only is it fun for her, but it makes the explanation go easier.

After getting their food (and Jeff insisting on paying for hers, she would conjure up some money and slip it to him later), Machaela sat at a back table with her back to the wall, and Jeff repeated his question.

"So what were those things?"

Around bites of chicken, Machaela answered, "Demons. Six were Egyptian. Three were Greek. Normally, they wouldn't even consider working together, the two pantheons, I mean, but I combine too many bloodlines. Since I was the one trying to hunt down the Egyptians monsters after a spell backfired, they, of course, teamed up with some Greek monsters."

"Greek? Egyptian?" He gave her a calculating look, probably wondering if she needed a doctor.

"Have you studied any mythologies?" she asked, and he nodded. "Which ones?"

"Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Norse."

She smirked in amusement. "Great. You've studied the four we know are real." The look he gave her clearly conveyed worry that she had finally lost it, and she told him, "Careful. If you call the loony bin on me, you'll need to admit yourself too. You saw all nine of them before I ever appeared on scene." He pulled another face at her, conceding the point, and she continued. "The various gods were all created during Creation week, made and meant to serve the Lord through stewardship over different parts of the Earth's operations." Jeff pastored a small church nearby. She'd lose his attention in a hurry if she didn't start with their real place in the universe. "As far as we can tell, the pantheons came about based mostly on geography and which cultures met which gods at some point. Over the course of time, the different stewards stopped rejecting and redirecting the worship meant for God away from themselves, and they went rogue.

"The Egyptian gods need a human host to leave the Duat, and after several gods killed many humans, the Egyptians spent two millennia hunting and locking away the gods they knew of. The Greeks and Romans, however—well, Olympus moves with the heart of the west, and those pantheons actually have independent physical forms. Considering the Greek and Roman gods have demigods, it became more a matter of trying not to be a pawn than trying to lock them up, with a few exceptions." Thunder rumbled outside, and Machaela rolled her eyes. "You know I'm right, Zeus."

"Don't worry about it," she answered Jeff's look. "Anyway, when I was separated from the rest of my family by that car crash, Egyptian magicians are the ones who took Jesse and me in. We came to New York after realizing our Blood of the Pharaohs heritage would help the war effort here, and the summer after I graduated, when I finally found the rest of my family, I found out my biological dad is Hephaestus and I'm a legacy of Mercury."

He took a moment to digest that. "So the group of kids you always arrived with…?"

"Every student at BAG that names their guardian as Sofia, Amos, or Aunt Kitty is a magician," she told him. "There are about twenty-five in Brooklyn House right now."

"How many are also demigods?"

"None. My siblings and I are the only ones that combine three worlds. We do a rotation in the summer among the groups, but that's after school's already out. Olympus is in Manhattan, so the Greek demigods train at a camp on the north end of Long Island, while Roman demigods go to a camp near San Francisco. The Egyptians divided the world into Nomes, and Brooklyn is number twenty-one. Our headquarters is a few miles from here."

"San Francisco? Don't you go to college near there?"

She nodded, surprised he had noticed that. "My college is within the Roman camp's borders. It's the only place my siblings and I can go to school and not have monsters attacking our dorm room. They also have degree programs specific to demigods, like my major combining construction, design, and metalworking, among other things, that's only available to children of Vulcan or Hephaestus. I train with the legion on weekends and go to class during the week."

"And what was that about 'the war effort'?"

Finished with her meal by now, Machaela's grip on her drink became just the slightest bit too tight. "The September I was at BAG, you remember I missed a day without explanation?" He nodded. "That weekend, all of us at Brooklyn House, what we call our local headquarters, travelled to Egypt. A team of rebels had allied with the Chaos snake and was going to siege the First Nome. We prevented the Egyptian apocalypse that weekend, and that upcoming war is why Jesse and I moved to New York to begin with, because the group in New York was doing the most to prevent it, then fight it. About a month before that, on August 1, the Greeks and Romans fought and prevented their own apocalypse when they defeated the Earth Mother. I've fought in one war; my sister has fought two, as she fought for Olympus three years ago when the Titan lord rose. We're hoping to avoid a repeat performance any time soon, like this century, but the Norse might have a battle coming soon, and we don't know if we'll be called in to help. For now, every group is settling back into everyday life. The Egyptians are training their initiates and tracking down demons that escape a backfiring spell. Rumor has it the Greeks have lost a major god in Manhattan," she rolled her eyes at this, "as if _that_ could happen. And the Romans recently sent a team to Alaska to recover some Imperial Gold that was found up there a few years ago."

He leaned back, running his fingers over his goatee in an unconscious motion of thought. She released a small grin—he hadn't changed a bit—but the grin didn't stay long as he kept thinking. Knowing his habit of thinking things completely through before responding, she stayed quiet and let him think, but eventually doubt started crowding in. Was he going to call her crazy and cut off contact? She still hadn't told him that she thought of him as a father, but she also couldn't imagine life without him.

Struggling to keep her face blank as she battled the worry he would reject her, she studied the crowd around her. The restaurant seemed more crowded than it had a few minutes before, which could be tied to the lunch rush or to a monster.

She saw nothing amiss as the crowd eventually received their food and flowed to the tables outside. Jeff stilled hadn't answered, however, and she resumed watching the crowd, though now more for entertainment than necessity.

A large family of kids chased each other around the play set. A group of college kids sat in the corner talking and laughing. Outside, she could hear cars honking on the main road and the drive-through speakers sounding off with each new customer. Through the window, she could see a couple leaving a picnic table, finished with their food, and pointing out the large dog waiting for his owner to return. A mom called the large family of kids together, and they left out the back while…wait. Dog?

Suddenly alert, she looked back out the front window toward the dog awaiting its owner. It was staring straight at her. She blinked, forcing herself to look through the Mist, and her eyes refocused as the truck-sized hellhound slammed into the side of the building. Shrapnel flew through the restaurant, most of it too small to hurt anyone, except for the piece of steel headed straight for her and Jeff.

Adrenaline hummed, and magic flowed. _"Kep." Shield._

She placed it around both of them—there was no one in the neighboring tables—but centered it on Jeff. As long as she remained conscious, he and anyone he stood next to would be shielded from the battle. The flying piece of steel deflected off the barrier behind his chair, putting a dent in her magic reserves, before burying itself in the wall. She could feel him watching her, but she didn't glance over, too afraid of the fear and rejection she was sure would be in his eyes. She knew this attack would be the final straw. She would never hear from him again. That hellhound had just cost her her father, and it was going to die.

She stood, keeping her eyes firmly on the monster as she drew her sword. "Stay here," she told Jeff, then she stepped outside the shield she had thrown up.

The hellhound let her come outside, stepping through the gaping hole in the building, before it lunged at her.

She dodged and spun, avoiding the attack while staying between the monster and the building. Before it could attack again, she lunged, slashing deeply into its leg with her sword. Howling in pain, it tried to tackle her while she was turned to the side. She ducked under the attack, raking her sword down the hound's stomach. The wound wasn't fatal, but it did land with a crash and a whimper. One more swipe of her sword and the monster dissolved into dust.

The battle was over in a hurry, but she stayed on alert. Hellhounds usually travelled with a humanoid, like an _empousa_. She scanned the people in and around the parking lot, looking for the other monster and knowing that it might be trying to escape. If their hellhound was killed quickly, the _empousa_ didn't always attack, especially if the demigod was female.

 _There_. A tall, slim girl was trying to slip away from the area unseen, but Machaela could see the mismatched legs peeking out from under her clothes.

Knowing better than to throw her sword by hand, she judged the distance and used a spell.

 _"Tao." Throw._

Her sword flew out of her hand, embedding itself in the back of the monster as Machaela took off running to retrieve it, releasing her concentration on the shield when she got too far from the building.

Scooping her sword up out of the pile of monster dust, she hurried back towards the restaurant, hoping to find Jeff waiting for her. She stepped inside the damaged building to find pandemonium. People ran here and there, corralling kids, cataloguing damage, checking for injuries, and trying to find the cause of the explosion. Nobody had any obvious injuries, and she needed to get away from the scene, so she didn't stop. More than slightly worried about what she would find, she shoved her way through the panicking mortals to where she had last seen Jeff.

Beneath a steel beam driven six inches into the wall, all she found was an empty table.

 **Poor Machaela...**

 **Remember, authors post for reviews. Let me know your thoughts. Good? Something I need to improve on? Tell me! :)**


	3. Chapter 3

Her heart broke, and all her doubts from before the battle raced back into her mind. She knew he must have bailed as soon as her shield had dropped, but just to be sure, she check the area for any sign of injury. She found nothing; even their trays had been put away. He was gone, probably far away from the damaged restaurant by now.

Silent tears tracing down her cheeks, she knew she had to get away from the restaurant too, unless she wanted to be a snack for whatever monster tracked down this newest battle. She pushed her way out of the crowd and turned north, seeking only to get out of range and avoid another attack.

Setting her pace to an easy jog, she couldn't stop the tears. She had claimed him as her father for three years, even though she had never told him. They had kept in regular contact even after she graduated and moved, first to Tennessee, then to California, and the pain of the loss of their friendship rocked her as a large wave rocks a boat.

When she felt far enough away to stop jogging, she let her pace slow to a walk as she ducked her head and let the silent sobs wrack her body, no longer caring who might see her tears or that her vision was too blurry to see anything but the sidewalk in front of her.

She had no idea how long she walked like this before her sobs slowed, then stopped, quiet tears still streaming down her cheeks. A minute later, she heard footsteps hurrying behind her on the otherwise open sidewalk.

She moved over to the edge of the sidewalk, giving the other person plenty of room to pass, but the footsteps slowed, and she heard a very familiar voice.

"Girl, do you have any idea how fast you run?"

She whirled around, wiping a tear off her cheek, to find Jeff standing behind her, panting slightly from running to catch up with her.

"Why you cryin'?" he asked when he saw her face. "You hurt?" He looked at her again, then spoke up before she could try to answer. "Nah, I know you better'n that. You thought I left, didn't ya?"

She nodded, still staring at him and battling with hope that maybe he _hadn't_ left. He had caught up with her, right?

"Now, Machaela, you ought to know better'n that. I love you like a daughter. I'd no more leave you than I would little Missy." The stray thought crossed Machaela's mind that "little Missy" should be pushing thirteen or fourteen by now, but that was beside the point as she stared at him, struck speechless. "Don't look at me like that. I mean it."

Another tear slipped out at that, not quite believing her ears when she had spent the last several minutes thinking he had left her. She wiped it away, but he still noticed.

"Oh, get over here." He stepped up and wrapped her in a hug. "I don't care if I found out you were an alien from Mars," he told her, "you're family, and nothin's gonna change that."

He waited until she had calmed down a bit before ending the hug. "You good now?" She gave him a slightly watery grin and nodded. "Good. You gonna tell me what happened back there? Like maybe how that steel beam hit the wall behind you after bouncing off the back of my chair? Or what it was that attacked in the first place?"

She chuckled a bit despite the tears still drying on her face. "Did you see the boundary around you after I walked outside?" He nodded as they started walking north again. "I put up a shield as soon as the hellhound crashed into the side of the building, and that deflected the beam. It's part of Egyptian magic. I lowered the shield when I had to chase down the _empousa_ that was beating a hasty retreat after I killed her pet hellhound."

"I saw the boundary as you walked outside and knew you had somethin' to do with it, so when it shimmered and disappeared but you didn't show up right away, I thought you was hurt somewhere. I was at the other side o' the parkin' lot when I saw you push your way into the buildin', but I couldn't get back over there 'fore you came back out and headed north. I shoulda hollered at ya, but I figured I could just catch up—til you started joggin', anyway. By that point, you were too far off to hear me callin' for ya to slow down, then I remembered what ya said about gettin' away 'fore others caught the scent of battle."

"With no signs that you had been hurt," she told him, keeping her eyes firmly on the sidewalk ahead, "combined with how long you had been quiet after I finished answering questions, I figured you had left as soon as the boundary lowered. I could only get myself away from the battle site and hope you hadn't gone back south."

He shook his head at her. "I think I'm insulted," he told her, completely teasing and trying to get a laugh out of her. "To think you thought I'd abandoned you. That's not gonna happen."

She grinned, happy to hear him say it aloud, but didn't reply. He already knew what she thought of him.

"So," he said after a moment, "that boundary you put up. How fast can you do that?"

"Fast enough to stop a flying I-beam," she quipped.

"Fast enough to stop a flying chuck key?"

She stopped a moment and looked at him, struck by the coincidence that he should bring that up when she had been thinking about it before finally tracking down those demons. "I'm surprised you remember that," she told him as she resumed walking.

He raised an eyebrow. "How could I not? I shoulda died that day, 'cept you did somethin' with that glowin' magic o' yours that made a flyin' chuck key defy physics by two feet."

"Glowing?"

"Yep. Glowin'. After that incident with the lathe you glowed for several minutes—much like you did today, just on a lesser scale. It was hard to spot, but def'nitely there. Was it a boundary like today?"

"No, not a boundary," she finally answered. "Those with Blood of the Pharaohs are often born with an affinity for certain kinds of magic, which usually shows up a year or two after they begin training. I have a really rare affinity for Divine Words, which means I can channel magic using a single word or phrase in Ancient Egyptian to do what I want. Unlike most magicians, who work for years to master a couple of words, I can use almost any word I need to, and they don't use very much of my magic reserves. That day, I barely had enough time to _redirect_ the key," she winced at the memory, even after all this time, "and even then it still got you on the arm."

"Is that why you wince every time the incident is brought up?"

She nodded. "I almost wasn't fast enough."

"Yeah, you were."

"What?"

"You were plenty fast enough. Now I understand why you were so pale as you helped me treat my arm. It grazed me, yeah, but we both know where that key woulda hit if you hadn't deflected it." He stared at her, watching to see if she would vocalize it. When she didn't, he continued. "I looked at the trajectory, Machaela. You saw me. Flyin' from the smaller lathe, towards me, that key shoulda hit me square in the back. I woulda been dead instantly."

She blushed and looked away. It was one thing to witness it and know that would have happened. It was another to hear him say so.

"Machaela, look at me." He waited until she focused on him. "Don't be afraid to acknowledge what you've done. That day hit you hard, didn't it?" Hesitant, she nodded at him. "Why?"

"When did you decide to claim me as a daughter?" she asked instead of answering.

He thought a moment. "I don't know. Why?"

"Because by that point I already thought of you as my father, and all I could see was that chuck key flying toward you. I noticed that Connor left the key in, but I wasn't fast enough to keep him from turning on the lathe. Then I almost wasn't fast enough to redirect the key. I would never have forgiven myself."

"'Almost' doesn't matter, Machaela. What matters is what _did_ happen, and what _did_ happen was you saved me. Thank you."

She blushed again and looked away. "You would've done the same."

She could see he wanted to push the subject, but with a glance at her he changed the subject. "So what were you doing in town? You said your college is in San Fran."

"College let out last week. My siblings and I are spending a week at Brooklyn House before we go to camp. Part of having the lineage of three mythologies is having to do training with three exclusive groups. We're working on Egyptian magic this week before we spend the rest of the summer as councilors at the Greek camp. What were you doing? Shouldn't BAG be out for the summer as well?"

He chuckled. "Today was our last day, and I told Missy we'd go to the roller rink after I got home. I'll have a story to tell her when I get home, won't I?"

Machaela shook her head. "Only if you're gonna tell her you happened to run into me. I have to ask you not to tell your kids about the gods being real. Probably shouldn't tell your wife, either. Unless they can see through the Mist, it'll only confuse them. Also, if they're aware, even if they can't see, and they make friends with a demigod, it could draw the monsters right to them. You'd be putting them in danger."

He looked askance at her. "Seriously?"

She nodded. "Egyptian demons you wouldn't have to worry about, but Greek monsters track demigods by scent. When a demigod becomes aware of their lineage, their scent increases exponentially. If your kids were aware of the existence of the monsters and made friends with a demigod, the monsters might mistake them for a demigod, and they would get attacked by something they couldn't see. I wouldn't have told you if you couldn't already see through the Mist."

He shook his head thoughtfully. "Well, thanks for the warning. Where you goin' now?"

She shrugged. "Continued north to avoid another attack. Now I'm taking a very roundabout way back to Brooklyn House. We'll probably run into Grace and Jesse at some point. Carter would kill me if I led you all the way to base, but it'll be a while before I have to break off." She looked around. "Don't you live around here?"

He pointed slightly northeast. "Five or six blocks that way."

"I'll walk you home, then," she smiled at him, and they turned at the next corner. "Have you gone back to Tennessee for a visit as you were planning last time we talked?"

"We did." He launched into a description of his trip, and couldn't resist ending with a teasing quip that started a round of bickering. They were still going at it when Machaela spotted Jesse and Grace up ahead. Machaela enjoyed finally introducing Jeff to her siblings, but found it intriguing how much Jeff seemed to be studying her sister.

She didn't bother asking. She would wrangle an explanation out of him eventually. For now, she was just glad she would have a chance to do so. Glad he hadn't abandoned her.

What was that phrase Grace liked to use?

"Family might be messy," Grace said when she asked, "but family is also eternal."

And that didn't matter whether they were family by blood or of the heart.

 **And here ends Of Blood and Heart. Don't forget to review! I want to hear if you liked it and if you thought I could do anything to better my writing.**

 **Youngid: thank you for the review! As for your question, I have. Go see _More Gods?_ and _The Lost Conversation_. I have another one in the works, but it'll be a while before I post that one**


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